


Fragments of Time

by b0nes



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, most of them are guilt, our boy has problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22550212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b0nes/pseuds/b0nes
Summary: He wonders if it’s just the guilt talking, but there’s no one in ear shot at this hour to hear another useless, frankly weak, apology tumble out of his mouth like somehow words alone will fix everything that’s been broken by the Organization he was a part of. It makes his guts twist into knots. That’s why he’s here, after all, to do something about it. At first it had been a little insulting - learn to fight, learn to use magic, learn to use your keyblade. Axel knew how to fight. He’d been fighting all his life.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	Fragments of Time

**Author's Note:**

> i was digging through my google drive looking for something else when i found this. it's kind of old but i thought it was really good, so i wanted to share it! it's my first published fic and i wrote it before actually finishing the game proper, so be gentle.

Axel isn’t good at letting things go. For as long as he can remember -- that’s how long he holds onto things, and when he said  _ commit it to memory _ or  _ got it memorized _ it was more than just a nebulously threatening or once-upon-a-time goofy vocabulary tic that made him kind of odd in a classroom full of fairly average kids or a chamber full of soulless has-beens.

And it’s now, in the middle of a clearing, in the middle of the woods, slightly to the left of East Magic Nowhere, Axel remembers things. The moon glistens, watery in the misty air above, framed by thin clouds that blot lighter black, not quite grey yet, and in patches around stars that twinkle too brightly to be real, and it stares down at him, cold as anything. He feels dew dampen his hair, feels the chill of the ground beneath his back even through his heavy coat, the grass tickling his neck. Axel feels cold but his hands sweat inside their gloves. He must not be used to such a  _ normal _ body temperature. Certainly.

Or maybe it’s the strange episode that’s gripped him by the chest in buzzing talons, piercing holes into the foundation he’s barely scraping together out here with a girl he recalls having tried to harm or kill numerous times in a - by this point, it feels - bygone era when he was only barely in control of himself and the moods that blazed through him like solar flares. There in an instant, laying waste to buildings and bodies that no one remembered, and gone just as quickly, nothing but ice cold goddamned  _ nothing _ in its wake.

Lea --  _ Axel, _ it’s  _ Axel _ now, because  _ Lea, _ who was optimistic and silly and sentimental, died when he awoke to a new calling as a lunatic’s favorite attack dog;  _ Axel  _ is the name of a man with nothing to lose and unafraid to burn everything down around him with all the people still inside -- blinks slowly and his eyelids feel like rough grit sandpaper. They sting, and Axel brings his hands up to rub at them. He should sleep. It’s been days.  _ Exhausting _ days full of practice and theory, but the pressure in his chest  _ hurts _ and makes him want to stay awake - to hope that it’ll pass and he can just go back to nothing again. It’s easier to fall asleep with nothing in your chest. Nothing was so much easier than grief. It was easier than guilt, easier than loss and loss and loss.

It was easier than feeling so utterly _ alone. _

He looks at the moon again and a tiny wisp of a cloud is passing across its face. For the first time in at  _ least  _ twenty minutes he thinks about Isa. He thinks about the bridges burned with icy comments and snarky quips, weaponized against the man who used to be his best friend -- the best friend he replaced, like he meant nothing at all. Axel wonders sardonically how much Isa really  _ did _ mean to him, if it was so easy to wedge a small and confused and empty-headed kid into the negative space left behind, but thinking about Roxas hurts just as much, makes his eyes sting so much more sharply, and Axel can see his breath rise in a brittle cloud as he exhales, sharply inhales, just tries to  _ breathe. _

This was what having a heart felt like. He remembered that, too. He remembered the pain he’d felt in childhood, before all of  _ this _ went so…  _ that way. _ He struggles to remember what joy feels like, though. It’s been such a long time, and counting the years makes the knot in his throat so painful he has to stop. Axel tries again to take a deep breath and succeeds, but when he closes his eyes, ghostly images of the full moon hanging like a guillotine in the sky flit across his vision.

And that’s what it feels like, too. A guillotine, aimed _ just so _ to liberate his head from his neck -- Isa told him once, when they were young, that the head can stay alive for as long as fifteen seconds after being removed from the body. Lea believed it then. Axel wonders now. In a place so peaceful, so full of life and magic and a girl with an ageless kindness in her eyes, a heavenly body sits as silent as the grave; Judge, jury, and executioner, mocking,  _ waiting _ for him to stop playing at becoming the hero he was never fated to be.

He wonders if it’s just the guilt talking, but there’s no one in ear shot at this hour to hear another useless, frankly  _ weak _ , apology tumble out of his mouth like somehow words alone will fix everything that’s been broken by the Organization he was a part of. It makes his guts twist into knots. That’s why he’s here, after all, to do something about it. At first it had been a little insulting - learn to fight, learn to use magic, learn to use your keyblade. Axel  _ knew _ how to fight. He’d been fighting all his life.

But Axel fought to win. He fought with the intent to kill, just simply following orders, and he wonders now just how many people crossed paths with him when he was “just simply”  _ following orders. _ The one thing he didn’t remember. The one thing he never once allowed himself to think about whenever he would return to the castle with smoke in his lungs and ringing in his ears, and a look of confusion on Roxas’ face - of hurt when Axel never told him the truth.

And how does Axel stack up against heroes who stood face to face with true darkness and never looked away? He’s as defiant as they come, surely, but they never knew what it was like, giving in.  _ Really _ giving in. Riku walked the line between light and dark with confident finesse, no longer the broken boy he was, and Sora, who repeatedly looked pain and darkness and malice itself in the face and  _ smiled… _ Axel laughs bitterly to himself, and what starts as a chuckle slips into something a little uncomfortable and plunges headlong into slightly manic. He’s never laughed and cried at the same time and the way bottomless misery and bubbly delight mix like water and oil on fire makes his stomach roil in warning to cut the shit or he’ll be seeing that ice cream again, and soon.

Why did Axel deserve to be on the same level as people like  _ that? _ But he doesn’t have answers. He doesn’t have answers for anything. Isa was always the one with answers. At home. In class. In the castle. Isa, the smart one. Isa, the strong one, the pillar of gleaming and untouched marble in an ocean of black and decay.

But he surrendered, didn’t he... Steadfast and pragmatic Isa had rotted away until his eyes burned empty and yellow. And now Axel was the only one still standing. Still himself. It almost makes him start laughing again but he bites his lip hard and as an alternative, tears spill freshly shed into his hairline. The screw-up kid everyone was sure would never amount to anything, handed the typewriter of fate to rewrite his destiny while his cool-headed genius co-pilot had utterly lost himself, mind and body, to the purest evil no one could imagine.

Axel was meant to die fighting, walled in by fire and hate and violence and  _ so much pain, _ but now…

Some nights he hopes he’ll survive whatever is coming.

Most nights, he doesn’t.

But Kairi doesn’t need to know that.  



End file.
